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The Public World/Syntactically Impermanence
Sales Date: 1999-08-27
A new collection of essays and poetry from the poet Library Journal called "one of the most unique and powerful writers at the forefront of American literature."
The Public World / Syntactically Impermanence is a brilliant consideration of the strategies of poetry, and the similarities between early Zen thought and some American avant-garde writings that counter the "language of determinateness," or conventions of perception. The theme of the essays is poetic language which critiques itself, recognizing its own conceptual formations of private and social, the form or syntax of the language being "syntactically impermanence."
Whether writing reflexively on her own poetry or looking closely at the writing of her peers, Leslie Scalapino makes us aware of the split between commentary (discourse and interpretation) and interior experience. The "poetry" in the collection is both commentary and interior experience at once. She argues that poetry is perhaps most deeply political when it is an expression that is not recognized or readily comprehensible as discourse.
Demonstration/Commentary I. The Radical Nature of Experience
The Cannon
Silence and Sound/ Text
Footnoting
thin-space
Experience/'On'Sight
'Thinking Serially' in For Love, Words, and Pieces
The Recovery of the Public World
As: All Occurrence in Structure, Unseen II. The Weatherman Turns Himself In
As: All Occurrence in Structure, Unseen-(Deer Night)
Friendship
LESLIE SCALAPINO is author of numerous books of poetry, essays, ad plays, as well as the novel Defoe (Sun and Moon,1994). Among her books of poetry are way (1988), that they were at the beach-aeolotropic series (1985) and Considering how exaggerated music is (1982), all published with North Point Press. Wesleyan has published her most recent books: New Time (1999) and The Front Matter, Dead Souls (1996).
""Scalapino's work is sui generis, profoundly original. She synthesizes the various aspects of her writing into a powerful and gripping combination of critical writing and post-genre 'creative' writing. Her practise of, and reflection on, narrative are breathtaking.""
~Pierre Joris
"Scalapino's work is at the forefront of American poetry today. Each of her books challenges us to rethink habituated forms of perception, not in the sense of her writing about this as a theory but through her compositional methods that bring us as readers to experience new modes of perception."
~Charles Bernstein
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